Children of Ezekiel: Aliens, UFOs, the Crisis of Race, and the Advent of End Time 0822322684, 9780822322689

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I. Cultural Transactions and the Poetics of Aggression
1. Technology of the Ineffable
2. The Psychopathology of the Bizarre
3. Prophecy Belief and the Politics of End Time
4. Arming the Heavens
II. Ideology, Eschatology, and Racial Difference
5. Heralding the Messenger
6. The Eschatology of theMother Plane
7. Visionary Minister
8. Armageddon and the Final Call
Conclusion
Notes
Index

Citation preview

Children

of

Ezekiel

Aliens,

UFOs,

the Crisis

CHILDREN : : : of ElE KI ELA~.nt of

Michael Lieb End Time

DUKE

UNIVERSITY

PRESS·

DURHAM

AND

LONDON

1998

© 1998 Duke University Press

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 00 Typeset in Minion by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

For

Kathryn

Grace

and

Nicholas

Samuel

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

VllJ

Technology of the Ineffable 21

1.

Cultural Transactions and the Poetics of Aggression

2. The Psychopathology of the Bizarre 42

3. Prophecy Belief and the Politics of End Time 74 4. Arming the Heavens

"

Ideology,

Eschatology, and Racial Difference

100

5. Heralding the Messenger 129 6. The Eschatology of the Mother Plane 155 7. Visionary Minister

8. Armageddon and the Final Call 198 Conclusion Notes

235

Index

299

230

178

Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to those whose guidance has aided me in the production of this book. These include the readers for Duke University Press: Albert C. Labriola, Michael E. Zimmerman, and Joseph Anthony Wittreich Jr. For their wise evaluations, judicious comments, and careful reading, I extend my heartfelt thanks. I also take this opportunity to express my gratitude to Stanley E. Fish for his confidence in my project and for his continuing encouragement and support. Finally, I am grateful to Reynolds Smith for his guidance in helping me see my book through the press. Several of my colleagues assisted me in the research and writing of this book, and I thank them here. Noel W. Barker first alerted me to the presence of Ezekiel's vision in the writings of the Nation of Islam. Martin Riesebrodt proved helpful in sharing the benefit of his deep knowledge. David Jackson prqved himself most responsive to my inquiries and offered suggestions for further research. James Hall, Ned Lukacher, and Mae Henderson were generous with their time and advice. William A. Covino provided essential insights into

the world of cyberspace. Virginia Wexman and John Huntington offered generous suggestions and support. Susan Wadsworth-Booth's advice proved invaluable. A good portion of the manuscript received the careful and gracious attention of Mary Beth Rose, and Regina Schwartz offered advice and understanding. Much of my research for the second part of the book involved personal contacts and discussions with members of the Nation of Islam. In addition to undertaking library research, I made a point of becoming acquainted with members of the Nation willing to share with me the benefits of their insights and experiences. Among those with whom I talked at length, Munir Muhammad, cofounder of the Coalition for the Remembrance of Elijah (CROE), was extremely helpful. I shall long remember my several visits to the headquarters of CROE, where Munir Muhammad not only greeted me warmly but took time from his busy schedule to discuss with me my project and its implications. I also acknowledge here the openness and genuine good humor of Sidney Muhammad, whose insights proved invaluable to my undertaking. Finally, I note with thanks the efforts of Claudette Marie Muhammad on my behalf. This is a project that required extensive research in a wide range oflibraries. I acknowledge the staff, as well as the collections, of the University of Illinois at Chicago and its sister campus in Urbana; the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago; the Northwestern University Library; the libraries of the various theological seminaries that populate Chicago; the Newberry Library; and the Henry E. Huntington Library. For my work in the area of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, I have had the benefit of the Moody Bible Institute with its fine collections of end-time literature and its helpful staff, and I am grateful to the librarians at Aurora University, Aurora, Illinois, for allowing me access to rare material bearing on the Jehovah's Witnesses. For research on the Nation of Islam, I acknowledge here the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, Chicago Public Library. The staff of the Harsh Collection proved very astute in hunting down important source material. This book had its inception in 1983, when I was appointed as a fellow to the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Chicago, my home institution. During a period of almost three decades at this institution, I have benefited from the ideal environment it has provided for both teaching and research. In its later stages, my project was also supported by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and I am grateful indeed for this support. Substantially revised, two of my previously published articles have been incorporated into the first chapter. The first is "Milton's 'Chariot of Paternal

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS •

ix

Deitie' as a Reformation Conceit," Journal of Religion 65 (1985): 359-77. © 1985 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. The second is "Children of Ezekiel: Biblical Prophecy, Madness, and the Cult of the Modern:' Cithara 26 (1986): 12-22. Permission to incorporate these articles as part of my study is gratefully acknowledged. Extracts from the Authorized Version of the Bible (the King James Bible), the rights in which are vested in the Crown, are reproduced by permission of the Crown's Patentee, Cambridge University Press. I reserve the last word for my family. My wife, Roslyn, has been my mainstay. Her affection, support, and assurances over the years have meant everything to me. She has been ever my best friend. Reading large portions of my book in its various stages of composition, she offered timely and helpful advice. My sons, Mark and Larry, aided me with their encouragement and proved to be excellent sources of information concerning various aspects of my project. This book is dedicated to Kathryn Grace and Nicholas Samuel, my grandchildren. Although they are still too young to read what is written here, perhaps one day they will come to appreciate what it means to be "children of Ezekiel."

x .

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction

Aliens, UFOs, the Crisis of Race, and the Advent of End Time: what unites this disparate set of terms? And who are the so-called children of Ezekiel? Answers to these questions are found in the vision of God that inaugurates the biblical prophecy of Ezekiel. My discussion of this vision and its aftermath will take us on a journey into the history of the culture of alien encounters, racial crisis, and the fear of apocalyptic annihilation. This is a world in which unidentified flying objects and "mother planes" descend from the heavens. It is a world distinguished by fiery chariots and such technological wonders as tanks, laser weapons, and space-based "defense" systems. In this world, the emergence of technology confirms the ability of humankind to gain control of its environment and to overwhelm its enemies. This ability is grounded in the "will to power" that derives its impetus (as well as its putative legitimacy) from the ultimate source of power, God himself.l As the very embodiment of God's power, the vision of Ezekiel is one of the most remarkable events in all Hebrew Scripture. 2 Appearing in the first chapter

of the prophecy (and therefore known as the "inaugural vision"), Ezekiel's visio Dei is a revelation of momentous import. At the time that the prophet experiences his vision, he is in exile on the shores of the river Chebar in Babylon. 3 As the text of the vision unfolds, Ezekiel declares: And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire. Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man. And everyone had four faces, and every one had four wings. And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot: and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass. And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings. Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went everyone straight forward. As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side; and they four had the face of an ox on the left side: they four also had the face of an eagle. Thus were their faces: and their wings were stretched upward; two wings of everyone were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies. And they went every one straight forward: whither the spirit was to go, they went; and they turned not when they went. As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance oflamps: it went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning. And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning. Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces. The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. When they went, they went upon their four sides: and they turned not when they went. As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels. When those went, these went; and when those stood, these stood; and when those were

2 • CHILDREN OF EZEKIEL

lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up over against them; for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. And the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creature was as the colour of the terrible crystal, stretched over their heads above. And under the firmament were their wings straight, the one toward the other: everyone had two, which covered on this side, and everyone had two, which covered on that side, their bodies. And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host: when they stood, they let down their wings. And there was a voice from the firmament that was over their heads, when they stood, and had let down their wings. And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it. And I saw as the colour of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about. As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face. (Ezek. 1:4-28) Within this text, Ezekiel's vision of God represents an impulse through which the will to power finds expression in the wonders of technology that define the modern world. In 1970 Herbert J. Muller called those responsible for technological advancement the children of Frankenstein, an allusion that implicitly centers the emergence of technology in a "secular" text. 4 With the matrix of my investigation in a "sacred" text, the Book of Ezekiel, I call those who seek to harness the power that gives rise to technology the children ofEzekiel. Inventors, scientists, technologists, evangelicals, and poets, they are visionaries all. For them Ezekiel's visio Dei represents the wellspring of the impulse to fashion a technology out of the ineffable, the inexpressible, the unknowable. Drawing on the forces within the vision, they reinvent it, re-create it, "technologize" it in their own terms. It is the history of the impulse to technologize the ineffable centered in Ezekiel's vision of God that this study seeks to record. To provide a context for the study as a whole, I rehearse here the main lines of that history, followed by a discussion of Ezekiel's vision and the theoretical implications on which the study is founded. I begin with one of the most notable children of Ezekiel, the poet John

INTRODUCTION •

3

Milton. Through his epic Paradise Lost, the act of fashioning a poetic "vehicle" from a biblical source becomes tantamount to envisioning the original vision anew. To that end, Milton "invents" the "Chariot of Paternal Deitie;' which, as a pivotal representation, emerges from the midpoint of his epic. The Chariot of Paternal Deitie is the vehicle on which the Son of God as sublime charioteer embarks to overwhelm the rebellious angels in the celestial battle that Milton portrays. Reconceptualizing Ezekiel's vision, the Miltonic chariot embodies the technological impulse on a grand scale. As such, it is correspondingly imbued with a sensibility that only one engaged in a lifetime of combat with those opposed to the fulfillment of the Reformation ideology could envision. Inspired by the all-pervasive zeal that permeates this ideology, the Chariot of Paternal Deitie represents the desire to draw on the immense powers of the divine in order to oppose all who would stand in its path. If Milton's epic provides a poetic context for the reconception of Ezekiel's vision, the children of Ezekiel that succeed Milton reinvent or technologize the vision in their own terms. The emergence of these technologies is delineated through narratives that encompass events such as the invention of the flying machine, the founding of the railway system, and the deployment of the military tank in modern warfare. Products of the spirit of enterprise that emerged during the Industrial Revolution, technologies of this sort attest to the dissemination and transformation of Ezekiel's vision in the modern world. In this capacity, they function as the occasion through which Ezekiel's vision becomes a source of discovery, a means of knowing, of perceiving the true nature of the ineffable and how the ineffable operates in the world as we know it, that is, how the ineffable is transformed into actual machines. In the narratives that these transformations or "techno morphoses" encode, one such machine is the "unidentified flying object" or UFO, a phenomenon that represents a crucial aspect of the desire to appropriate the ineffable, to master it, and to conceive it in technological terms. With Ezekiel's visio Dei as its source, the "UFO phenomenon" has become an all-pervasive feature of modern culture. As I shall discuss, the transformation of the vision of Ezekiel into a UFO is discernible not only in "popular" forms of communication (tabloid, motion picture, and television) but in "scholarly" or officially sanctioned forms of investigation (government reports, scientific studies, and university-sponsored symposia) as well. Here, I shall examine figures ranging from Erich von Daniken, the famous UFO popularizer, to JosefF. Blumrich, a former NASA engineer. As a reflection of New Age fervor, the enthusiasm that infuses the visionary experiences of such children of Ezekiel is correspondingly reflected in the cyberspatial universe of emergent information technologies. This, too, becomes

4 .

CHILDREN OF EZEKIEL

the site of confluence between popular or mass culture and high or elite culture. Exploring the ramifications of that confluence, I take the opportunity to bring to the fore a host of witnesses who eminently fulfill our desire to become acquainted with the modern purveyors of Ezekiel's vision as a wellspring of sublime enactment. My discussion will demonstrate that the history of these purveyors is made evident on other fronts as well. Exploring the traditions of evangelicalism that emerged in the nineteenth century, I shall argue that Ezekiel's vision is crucial to the fervor that has since become a distinguishing factor in contemporary notions of apocalypse or end time. One of the most outstanding cases is the movement that has come to be known as the Jehovah's Witnesses. Under the auspices of Charles Taze Russell and later Joseph Franklin Rutherford, this movement conceived itself as a "chariotlike organization" inspired at once by a belief in the efficacy of progress and by an apocalyptic sense of the inevitability of Armageddon. These two strains of thinking bestowed on Ezekiel's vision a renewed impetus in the evangelical traditions. Consistent with this impetus, the evangelical devotion to end time located a new site of interpretation on which to found the apocalyptic outlook. Complementing the vision of God that emerges from the first chapter of Ezekiel is the oracle against Gog, articulated in the thirty-eighth chapter. 5 On the basis of this chapter, there arose the idea of "prophecy belief:' This idea transformed the biblical text into a blueprint for the invention of nuclear armaments that threaten to annihilate the world. With the Gog oracle, one discovers a mode of interpretation known as the "nuclearization of the Bible:' This is the inclination to view the warfare delineated in Ezekiel's oracles as a prophecy of the nuclear armaments that have become the dread of the modern world. Made evident in the religious life surrounding government facilities that produce weapons of mass destruction, the act of "nuclearizing" the Bible assumes paramount importance to end-timers of every stripe. Among the most influential of these is Hal Lindsey, whose works have attracted an immense reading public in the past twenty-five years. Incorporating end-time thinking into his wide-ranging publications, this purveyor of eschatology is one among a host of prophecy believers for whom Ezekiel is germane. Of corresponding importance are such television evangelists as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, both of whom enjoy immense followings in the end-time industry. With the advent of apocalyptic thinking grounded in the oracles of Ezekiel, a concomitant phenomenon is brought to the fore. Complementing the act of "nuclearizing" the Bible is that of "racializing" the Bible. Such an act is the product of the anxieties associated with Ezekiel's oracle against Gog as an

INTRODUCTION •

5

enemy prepared to swoop down from the northern regions and attack Israel. As a result of the fears to which this impending siege gives rise, apocalypticists transform the conflict between aggressor and victim into a final racial confrontation of cosmic significance. Initiating this confrontation are the alien hordes, under whom are marshaled the red forces of Russia and its allies, the yellow peoples of China and its neighbors, and the black African armies of the "Pan-Arab alliance." Under certain circumstances, even the "misled" white Europeans are conceived as aggressors. As powers that have always hated Israel and its inhabitants, these nations prepare for an all-out brutal attack of race against race, but, we are assured, the armies of the Anti-Christ will ultimately be destroyed through divine intervention. The politics implicit in such an outlook make their presence known not only among influential preachers who espouse the end-time cause but also among those who have held high public office. As one for whom the oracles of Ezekiel assumed consummate importance throughout his career, Ronald Reagan became a true believer in the efficacy of the prophetic word. Incorporating the ideology of prophecy belief into his own notions of end time, both as governor and as president Reagan became the means by which the specter of end-time thinking found its way most compellingly in the corridors of power. Because of the extent to which Reagan's life was reimagined through his own acts of selffashioning within his films, the relation between the cinematic personae and the public personae that he fostered as actor and as politician must be taken into account in any assessment of the role of end time in his thought. The fantasies of power that underlie such conceptions of end time influence the enactment of public policy. Indebted to cinematic renderings, these fantasies are of seminal importance to the establishment of the Strategic Defense Initiative (commonly known as "Star Wars"), which in its own way finds its counterpart in the technologizing of the milieu associated with Ezekiel's vision. The second part of this book focuses on the Nation of Islam, a movement driven from the outset by powerful, controversial, and charismatic personalities that must be addressed in some depth if a true understanding of Ezekiel's vision in its modern cultural setting is to be realized. At issue are the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Louis Farrakhan. During the period of their respective dispensations, each has experienced his own calling and has had his own encounter with the vision that inaugurates the prophecy of Ezekiel. In fact, their individual callings are deeply implicated in their visionary encounters. To appreciate the nature of those encounters, one must explore the forces that shaped the lives and personalities of these two figures from the very foundations of the Nation to the present time. Having done that, we may then come

6 . CHILDREN OF EZEKIEL

to terms more fully with what became the racial dimensions of Ezekiel's vision, which the Nation appropriated as a foundational event in its history and culture. In its conception of that event, the Nation transforms the vision into a wonder of technology, one in which it is figured forth as that machine of machines, the Mother Plane or Mother Wheel. For the Nation, this machine becomes an apocalyptic phenomenon of momentous import, indeed, the UFO par excellence. In the technological transformation that such a configuration entails, the vision as Mother Plane becomes the embodiment of racial difference as the crucial determinant of being and identity. A dynamic and everchanging phenomenon, the Mother Plane comes to reflect the growth of the Nation as a potent religious and political force in the history of the struggle for recognition and independence among black nationalists. In this capacity, the Mother Plane is infused with a resonance that is by its very nature both combative and conflicted. At issue is how the Mother Plane is conceived as the vehicle through which the Nation struggles against and ultimately overwhelms the so-called powers of the world. Whether in the form of the white race, the Christian community, or the Jewish community, those perceived by the members of the Nation of Islam as the "enemy" must face the consequences of their actions. Held responsible for the long period of affliction that the Nation seeks to counter, the powers of the world face ultimate obliteration through the workings of the Mother Plane as a vehicle both of destruction and of salvation. In its annihilation of the enemy and its resuscitation of the faithful at the time of Armageddon, the Mother Plane will have fulfilled its true calling. Such is the bearing that Ezekiel's vision assumes in the Nation of Islam, a movement that fully assimilates and reconfigures all that the vision implies as both an apocalyptic and a racial entity of monumental proportions. This study accordingly encompasses a broad spectrum of interests and concerns. Whether in the form of poetic renderings, blueprints for the construction of flying machines, the deployment of armaments in modern warfare, or speculations on the visitations of alien beings from other worlds, these interests and concerns collapse distinctions between elite and mass culture to suggest the centrality of visionary enactment to all areas of life. With the technologizing of the ineffable, the prophecy of Ezekiel comes to assume a crucial place in the history of culture through which the idea of the "modern" is defined and redefined from the Miltonic era to the present. As the process develops momentum during this period, the anxieties produced by the manifestation of deity in Ezekiel's prophecy give rise to such alarming events as the "nuclearization" and

INTRODUCTION •

7

"racialization" of the Bible. It is in such a setting that the apocalyptic impulse underlying visionary enactment moves disturbingly to the fore. At the core of Ezekiel's visio Dei reconceived in technological terms is the specter of end time. Emerging in all its dreadfulness from the anxieties that define the present, such a specter haunts us as our century moves inexorably toward the millennium. Having provided this overview, I need to say a few words about Ezekiel's vision itself and the theoretical implications that underscore my argument. Confronting the prophet with its "thunderous otherness;' the vision of Ezekiel records the moment in which the profound distance between the realm of the divine and the realm of the human is "portrayed in all its awesome enormity:'6 Imbued with its own symbolism, the vision underscores its otherness with representations that confound at the very point that they reveal. Rather than clarifying what the prophet sees, a plethora of details prevents the vision from ever coming into sharp focus. Although pictorial renderings of the vision abound (see figs. 1-2), the precise form of what the prophet sees finally eludes our grasp'? The storm, the cloud, the fire, the creatures, the faces, the wings, the wheels, the firmament, the throne: what in fact does the prophet behold? At the very point of perception, the vision reveals only to hide. If the creatures stretch two of their four wings upward in a posture of disclosure, they also cover their bodies with their two other wings in a posture of concealment (Ezek. 1:11). The paradox implicit in this posture establishes a metaphysics of vision: disclosure is concealment, concealment disclosure. The more we behold, the less we see. We are never permitted to penetrate the vision to its core. This paradox is further compounded by another element that underscores the complexity. For this is a vision that is not only seen: this is a vision that likewise sees. Not only the wheels but (in a subsequent delineation) the living creatures themselves are replete with eyes (Ezek. 1:18, 1O:l2). That which is beheld also beholds. The result is one that undermines all attempts to "fix" the vision, to stabilize it, to master it. This is a vision that confounds both by defying full perception and by seeing back. What results is an immensity that not only separates seer and seen but also causes the vision itself to remain forever elusive. 8 Despite the profound elusiveness of the -vision, there is indeed a quality about it that prompts one to view it in distinctly technological terms. In fact, one might suggest that the technological dimensions of Ezekiel's vision are all pervasive. 9 Implicit in the vision is a self-propelled object that moves irresistibly toward "thingness." What Ezekiel himself admires so much about it is what the original Hebrew calls its ma(aseh, "workmanship" or "construction" (Ezek. 1:16). The brilliance of the "substances" (bronze, chrysolite, crystal, sapphire)

8 .

CHILDREN OF EZEKIEL

tJ I S I 0

E Z E CHI ELI S

'P Z 0 'P H E T viE

PROPJ-I

Figure 1. Ezekiel's vision of God. Reproduced from a rendering of Ezekiell in Biblia sacra (1566 ), by permission of the Newberry Library, Chicago.

INTRODUCTION .

9

'nH'"1J

u~,u."... rJ

,.,/t

'It'H

nl'n

(tJl

~~~ 00' tl,tlrl.1Of!rlltl!lllfntl Im.9f1id*~ ""'".De..,'''''''

Figure 2. "The Likeness of Four Living Creatures." Reproduced from an engraving of Ezek. 1:5 by B. Picart (seventeenth century) in the Kitto Bible, 26:4938, by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

10 • CHILDREN OF EZEKIEL

that appear to compose it, the intricacy of its "mechanical parts" (e.g., the "rims" and "spokes" of the wheels), the complexity of its movements: submerged within the "mysterium" of the unknowable vision is that which cries out for objectification, for individuation, for the bestowal of a name. 10 It is no doubt for this reason that the inaugural vision has traditionally come to be known in Hebrew as the merkabah or throne-chariot. ll Despite the imposition of a name on the vision, Ezekiel himself never designates the "theophany" or revelation· of deity he beholds as that of the merkabah. For the prophet, the vision remains unnamed, just as the deity whom the vision portrays is unnameable (cf. Exod. 3:13-15). It is others who impose the name chariot or throne-chariot. 12 So Ben-Sira, in the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, refers to it as "the chariot of the cherubim" (49:8), a designation that the Chronicler applies to the ark of the covenant in the holy of holies (1 Chron. 28:18).13 As historians of religion have documented, the inaugural vision might well derive some of its inspiration from temple paraphernalia of this sort. A priest of the temple, Ezekiel would have been intimately familiar with objects such as the ark with its covering cherubim. 14 At the same time, the inaugural vision finds its counterpart in the various throne-chariots that appear everywhere in the culture of the ancient Near East, whether among the Persians, the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Hittites, or the Babylonians. ls The point is that the impulse to associate the theophany that Ezekiel beholds with some identifiable object is understandable, if not inevitable, considering the nature of the vision itself and the way it invites (indeed, compels) concretization. In this respect, the vision represents the very wellspring of the impulse to technologize the ineffable. An obvious example of such an impulse is discernible in the afterlife of the language through which the vision is delineated. The language employed to describe its workmanship or construction (such as the rims and spokes of its wheels) is in itself already sufficient to justify the interpretive act of technologizing the vision. More is at stake in the act of technologizing the ineffable, however, than discovering there the originary mechanism of a nascent vehicle. It is when the language of mystery assumes an afterlife that is totally imbued with the characteristics of a later culture that the transformation of "vision" into "thing" becomes particularly remarkable. This transformation reconceives the quality of "thingness" in a new form, as the manifestation of a new order, an entirely "other" dimension of knowing. This act at once concretizes and harnesses the mysterium of the language in which the vision is cast in order to provide a nomenclature for a phenomenon in the modern world that is entirely absent from the world of its origins.

INTRODUCTION . 11

In the vision of Ezekiel, such an event centers in that most awesome and mysterious of terms, bashmal. This is the word used to describe that "something" that emanates from the middle of the fire surrounding the vision as a whole: "and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber [bashmal], out of the midst of the fire" (Ezek. 1:4).16 The word amber (bashmal) is attested only twice thereafter in Ezekiel, first in 1:27 ("and I saw as the colour of amber [bashmal]"), then in 8:2 ("as the appearance of brightness, as the colour of amber [bashmalJ"). It is attested in no other passages either in Ezekiel or elsewhere in Hebrew Scripture, for that matter. That is why the actual meaning of the term is dubious at best. Such is the conclusion reached by the Brown, Driver, and Briggs edition of the lexicon of Gesenius, the standard source: "etym. and exact mng. dub.; evidently some shining substance;' perhaps "a brilliant amalgam of gold and silver:'I? Whereas the Authorized Version and the New Revised Standard Version render it as "amber," the New International Version renders it as "glowing metal" and the Revised Standard Version as "gleaming bronze:' In the Septuagint, it appears as elektron and in the Vulgate as electrum. 18 According to the rabbinic traditions, an unauthorized encounter with Ezekiel's vision can be devastating because of the unpredictable nature of bashmal. 19 The ancient rabbis taught that there was once a child who happened on the Book of Ezekiel in the house of his teacher. There, the child decided to read the opening chapter of the prophecy. Arriving at that point in which the text mentions bashmal, and apprehending its meaning, the child was suddenly consumed by the fires that surged forth from the mysterious phenomenon. In response to this devastating experience, the rabbis sought to suppress the Book of Ezekiel (l:Iagigah 13a, BT, 8:77-78).20 The power of the ineffable that resides within sacred texts can have horrendous consequences for those who are not prepared. The very sacredness and therefore the potential danger surrounding not just the inaugural vision but the entire prophecy are, according to the rabbinic traditions, centered in the mysterium of bashmal. If one is not destroyed by bash mal, one risks at the very least being driven insane. One thinks of Rabbi ben Zorn a, who, in the mysterious realm known as pardes, looked and became demented as the result of his encounter with the merkabah O;lagigah 14b, BT, 8:90-91). In the talmudic narratives Caggadot) that are a primary source of lore concerning Ezekiel's vision, such events underscore that most holy of phenomena, the ma(aseh merkabah (work of the chariot), on which it is dangerous to speculate unless those who are speculating are truly sages and fully in possession of their own faculties. To anyone who would violate the interdictions surrounding the merkabah, "it were a mercy:' the rabbis declare,

12 .

CHILDREN OF EZEKIEL

"if he had not come into the world" (J:Iagigah llb, BT, 8:59-60). Such is particularly true for those who are not "old" enough to protect themselves from the power of "the holy."21 I;Iashmal is not for "children" of any age. Although there have been speculations on precisely how old one must be in order to survive the ordeal of speculating on the ma'aseh merkabah, the point is that one who is a child and lacking in those faculties that distinguish the true sage risks immolation or, at the very least, insanity.22 In the rabbinic traditions, such is the aura surrounding the ma'aseh merkabah and such the power of l:zashmal. The technological underpinnings of Ezekiel's vision are particularly apparent in the meanings that are ascribed to the original language of the vision in contemporary discourse. Hashmal, for example, assumes the form of the modern Hebrew word for electricity, a meaning that recalls the Septuagint (elektron) and Vulgate (electrum) renderings. Whether as l:zashmal zirmi (current electricity), l:zashmal galvani (galvanic electricity), l:zashmal magneti (magnetic electricity), or l:zashmal setati (static electricity), in its various forms and combinations l:zashmal derives its impetus directly from the biblical usage as a pivotal moment in the unfolding vision that inaugurates the prophecy of Ezekiel. 23 What in the original prophecy is a term that encodes the mysterium of brilliance and majesty that emanates overwhelmingly from the visio Dei beheld by the prophet becomes in contemporary discourse a term that encodes the power through which modern culture implements and activates its world of technomastery: its generators, its dynamos, its automobiles, its aircraft, its factories, its telecommunications systems, its weaponry, its very mechanistic sources of empowerment and domination. A most compelling instance of the impulse to technologize the ineffable, this is a transformation of the profoundest sort. From a philosophical point of view, the nature of the impulse to technologize is best summed up by Martin Heidegger in his discourses on technology. As he argues in "The Question Concerning Technology;' for example, the concept technology (from techne, skill, art) is realized in the act of bringing forth (Hervorbringen). As such, technology is not the result of that which is simply "produced" through the act of causing something to be formed or constructed; rather, it is that through which the being of a thing is "manifested" or "disclosed." In the process of bringing forth, technology causes that which is concealed to be unconcealed or disclosed. The experience is tantamount to a revelation. For Heidegger, the act of bringing forth, then, is conceived as "revealing" or aletheia. As a "mode of revealing;' techne, says Heidegger, "comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where aletheia, truth, happens."24 As Michael E. Zimmerman observes, the being of an entity for Heidegger implies its "presencing" in the sense of its "appearing" or

INTRODUCTION . 13

its "self-manifesting." Zimmerman terms this the "aletheia-Iogical, or truthlike, conception of being." In keeping with that idea, aletheia as truth is specifically "unconcealment."25 In its ability to bring forth into un concealment, techne, for Heidegger, finds its correspondence in poiesis, the highest form of techne. Accordingly, techne is something "poetic." So Heidegger maintains in "The Origin of the Work of Art" that poetry, too, is an "illuminating projection toward un concealment." Specifically, "poetry is the saga of the unconcealment of what is. "26 It is, Zimmerman observes, "an ontologically disclosive mode;' one that has affinities with the idea of seeing, of revealing, of revelation itself. In the perception of that self-disclosure, the philosopher becomes seer, one gifted with the "ontological vision" required for insight into "the various modes of presencing that constitute the history of being:'27 With his ontological vision, the philosopher as seer is attuned to "the saga of the unconcealment." If poiesis is the highest form of techne, then that which is truly technological in the Heideggerian sense is that which is truly visionary. Although the merkabah does not figure into Heidegger's discourses on techne and poiesis, one might nonetheless observe that, as visionary poem par excellence, the text of Ezekiel's inaugural vision embodies "the saga of the un concealment of what is. " Exploring various events in the history of that saga, I shall argue that the act of technomorphosis reveals as much about those who attempt to interpret the vision as it does about the vision itself. At the same time, I propose to explore the psychogenetic foundations of the vision, initially, at least, from the point of view of an experience that has affinities with the aberrant, the disturbed. Approaching the vision from this point of view confirms Jacques Ellul's contention not only that technology in its broadest sense "makes a fundamental appeal to the unconscious" but also that, conceived psychologically, the technological expresses itself as a "derangement," one that finds its correspondence in an "aesthetic of madness."28 If such is true of technology in general, it is especially true of the psychological foundations of Ezekiel's vision. Both the prophet and the vision have provoked no end of controversy in this regard. First, there is the curious behavior of the prophet himself. Scholars marvel at Ezekiel's experience of bodily paralysis and periods of trances (Ezek. 3:15, 4:4-6); his accounts oflevitation (Ezek. P2-14, 8:3, 11:1); his cutting, weighing, dividing, burning, binding, and scattering his hair (Ezek. 5:1-4); his sudden clapping of the hands and stamping of the feet (Ezek. 6:11); and his belief in his power to destroy with speech (Ezek. 11:13). His behavior perplexes in the extreme, and his place of work is the sickroom. He is told to shut himself within his house. He is bound with cords, and his tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth so that he is dumb (Ezek. 3:24-26). He

14 . CHILDREN OF EZEKIEL

is given to prepare his food with dung (Ezek. 4:15) and to accuse his enemies of worshiping dung balls (the term dung ball is found more often in Ezekiel's prophecy than anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible).29 Such circumstances have prompted some scholars to see in Ezekiel evidence of an especially pronounced pathology.30 Edwin C. Broome "diagnoses" the prophet as one plagued by paranoid schizophrenia, characterized by catatonic symptoms and an inclination toward masochism, exhibitionism, narcissism, and delusions of grandeur. Within this context, the inaugural vision becomes an "anxiety dream" in which the dreamer envisions a kind of "influencing machine" that Broome finds typical of recorded cases of paranoia. In one such case cited by Broome, the patient "drew a scheme in which the top 'level' was represented by a square, containing three types of rays; below this was a 'searchlight extension' represented by a triangle, and below this, a trapezoidal figure called the 'machine.' This, the patient believed, had been used by his 'enemies' since his birth, to read and control his thoughts, and to govern his actions through 'electronic' waves." As a prime instance of a case in which such an influencing machine assumes theological proportions, Broome singles out Sigmund Freud's classic case of paranoia, Daniel Paul Schreber, whose conception of God's omnipotence, Broome argues, is not dissimilar to Ezekiel's own. God appears to Schreber as a bipartite figure whose overwhelming presence emits both rays and voices that spin out toward Schreber's head like telephone wires. In his analysis of Ezekiel's so-called psychosis, Broome notes other points of comparison between the prophet and Schreber as well. 31 If much of what Broome maintains has come under attack from several quarters, Ezekiel's personality remains a cause celebre in biblical scholarship. Most recently, David J. Halperin has devoted a major, full-scale study to the subject. Although critical of several of Broome's assumptions, Halperin has demonstrated the appropriateness of the psychoanalytic approach to an understanding of Ezekiel's personality. If the merkabah remains outside the immediate bounds of Halperin's study, his analysis nevertheless makes it clear that this phenomenon invites the kinds of speculations evinced by Broome's attempt to understand the putatively "disturbed" nature of the psyche that might produce so remarkable a vision as that which inaugurates the prophecy of Ezekiel. 32 Broome's speculations at the very least confirm the correspondence between the psychological and the technological that not only coalesces in the visionary but also expresses itself in what Ellul calls a "derangement." Techne, to use Heidegger's formulation, moves inevitably toward (and, in fact, reemerges as) psyche. Expressed as a "derangement;' the visionary produces an "aesthetic of madness;' a technology of the bizarre. Because Ezekiel's own personality has

INTRODUCTION • 15

been characterized as "nonnormative," perhaps even "deranged," it should not come as a surprise that the inaugural vision lends itself to reformulations that might be considered correspondingly "deviant." If such is the case, these reformulations are eminently worthy of our consideration for they will be seen to shed as much light on the vision as any that the opening chapters of Ezekiel might otherwise be thought to engender. It is through the "popular" culture of the inaugural vision that we are finally able to gain insight into what is really implied by the term aletheia. In our consideration of that culture, we shall encounter those inspired by an enthusiasm to translate visionary material into "scientific" schemes. As technological wonder, the inaugural vision will become a machine whose forces can be harnessed and channeled in whatever direction the person who has conquered these forces sees fit. Under such circumstances, the Schreberian psychotic of Edwin C. Broome will have found a way to overcome his "anxiety dream:' Gaining control of his "influencing machine," he will be in a position to place that machine at his own disposal or at the disposal of those to whom he would bequeath its tremendous powers. Having harnessed those powers, he will assume the exalted role of "scientist," one totally in control of all that the visionary experience has to offer. In this respect, he will become the new merkabah mystic, determined to transform the old mysticism into a new technology. Through him and his kind, the ma(aseh merkabah will take on renewed meaning, consistent with all those "mystics" who attempted to ascend to the realm of the merkabah in later Judaic lore. Conceived variously as Enoch, Abraham, Rabbi Akiba, or Rabbi Ishmael, these mystics have been designated the yordei merkabah (putatively, riders in the chariot).33 They are heroic figures indeed. Their adventures have been mapped in detail. Extending from the apocryphal and pseudepigraphic literature through a whole series of texts that recount the journeys of the yordei merkabah through the hekhalot or celestial halls to encounter the throne of God, the mystical experiences of the rigers in the chariot grow out of the rich lore surrounding the ma(aseh merkabah. 34 The means of their ascent are variable. Borne upward on the wings of birds or on the wings of the wind, the mystics are transported to their destination in wagons of light and carriages of fire. They are even known to be dragged on their knees as if abducted in their journeys to the celestial realms. 35 Whatever the means of transport, the purpose of their journeys is ultimately that of spiritual transcendence: the yordei merkabah desire to transcend the realm of the body in order to see and worship God "face to face." This is a dangerous

16 • CHILDREN OF EZEKIEL

business, to be sure, one that risks a range of disasters resulting in the possibility of madness or immolation: "The mystic is liable to be stoned or thrown into molten lava. His flesh is transformed into fiery streams that threaten to consume him. His eyelashes become flashes oflightning. He is in danger of being deluged by waves of water that represent the ethereal luminescence of the marble plates that adorn the individual palaces." To ascend through the heavens to the highest realm, he must placate angelic guards that stand watch at the entrance gates to the palaces. For that purpose, he fashions magic seals made of secret names. Reciting these names, he seeks entrance into ever-higher levels of gnosis. He who succeeds enjoys remarkable rewards. Transformed into a powerful being stationed beside the divine throne, he becomes a guardian of the secrets and treasures of the other world. Imbued with wondrous theurgic powers, he is able to behold the entire scope of history in a moment. The cosmos is at his disposal. He becomes a figure of utmost power. His is the will to power that transforms the desire to "see" God into the desire to "be" God, or at least to be as godlike in his possession of power as one can possibly imagine. 36 The old yordei merkabah anticipate the new. If the old merkabah mystics appropriated Ezekiel's vision in order to achieve a spiritual transcendence, the new avatars of techne appropriate the vision in order to achieve a material transcendence. 37 For the old merkabah mystics, Ezekiel's vision became a source of the triumph of spirit over matter; for the new avatars of techne, Ezekiel's vision becomes a source of the triumph of matter over spirit. What for the old merkabah mystics is trope for the technologists is letter; what for the mystics is word for their counterparts is thing. What for the mystics is a revelation of that divine "otherness" that distinguishes itself from the merely human for the new interpreters of the vision is a revelation of that by which the divine otherness is to be appropriated, transformed, and placed in the service of those who are no longer human but tantamount to gods. Through these new interpreters, poiesis assumes consummate form as "machine." Theirs is a "technopoetics" by means of which the deus ex machina becomes a machina ex dea. 38 What they embody is the impulse to mechanize, to control. In them, one finds the sensibility of the "modern" in all its forms for they are the moderns, the prophets of the New Age. Theirs is the religion of the New Age, the religion of the modern through which earlier forms of devotion, archaic modes of worship, discover a new outlet. These are the children of Ezekiel. If they (like the child caught reading the prophecy of Ezekiel in the house of his teacher) risk the prospect of madness or even immolation, they remain confident in their abilities to confront and overcome the dangers of the

INTRODUCTION . 17

vision. Whatever the respective "ages" of the children, they must be given their due. Visionaries of all persuasions, they augur a brave new world of locomotion, of flight, of mechanized conquest, of interplanetary space travel. They herald the era of the machine. What unites them is that most profound of biblical events, the visio Dei that inaugurates the prophecy of Ezekiel.

18 • CHILDREN OF EZEKIEL

I Cultural

Transactions

and the

Poetics

of

Aggression

Technology

of the

Ineffable

1

Any consideration of the appropriation of Ezekiel's visio Dei in the modern world might well begin with the most crucial of poetic renderings that this vision assumes. As an expression of the visionary imagination, the rendering in question is that of "the Chariot of Paternal Deitie," the sublime vehicle that represents the centerpiece of John Milton's Paradise Lost.! Emerging at the very midpoint ofthis great epic, the Chariot of Paternal Deitie accrues to itself both narrative and cultural implications of seminal importance to the work as a whole. 2 As it rushes forth "with whirlwind sound" on "the third sacred Morn" of the War in Heaven, the chariot is described as Flashing thick flames, Wheel within Wheel undrawn, It self instinct with Spirit, but convoyd By four Cherubic shapes, four Faces each Had wondrous, as with Starrs thir bodies all And Wings were set with Eyes, with Eyes the wheels

Of Beril, and careering Fires between; Over thir heads a chrystal Firmament, Whereon a Saphir Throne, inlaid with pure Amber, and colours of the showrie Arch. Within this vehicle, the Son of God, armed "in Celestial Panoplie;' sets out to overwhelm the rebel angels: ''At his right hand Victorie / Sate eagle-wing'd, beside him hung his Bow / And quiver with three bolted Thunder stor'd, / And from about him fierce Effusion rowld / Of smoak and bickering flame, and sparkles dire" (6.748-66). More than any other poetic construct that distinguishes the visionary imagination, this chariot represents a defining moment in the history of represent ation through which the vision of Ezekiel is manifested from the seventeenth century to the present time. To gain an understanding of the meanings that accrue to the Chariot of Paternal Deitie in the history of representation, one must at the outset address the Reformation underpinnings of the Miltonic chariot. 3 Through a reconstruction of those underpinnings, it is possible to come to terms with the import of the chariot not only to the narrative from which it springs but also to the afterlife that it engenders. This afterlife includes all those phenomena that become the staple of the children of Ezekiel: locomotives, automobiles, tanks, aircraft, unidentified flying objects, and the wonders of cyberspace. Manifested in religious movements ranging from the Jehovah's Witnesses to the Nation of Islam, it is an afterlife distinguished as much by the anxieties that beset a civilization on the verge of annihilation as by the marvels that distinguish the technology of the modern world. The Reformation underpinnings of the Chariot of Paternal Deitie are already discernible in Milton's antiprelatical tracts, such as the Apology for Smectymnuus (1642). There, Milton conceives of "Zeale whose substance is ethereal, arming in compleat diamond" and "ascend[ing] his fiery Chariot drawn with two blazing Meteors figur'd like beasts, but of a higher breed than any the Zodiack yeilds, resembling two of those four which Ezechiel and S. John saw, the one visag'd like a Lion to expresse power, high autority and indignation, the other of count'nance like a man to cast derision and scorne upon perverse and fraudulent seducers." Armed with these weapons, "the invincible warriour Zeale shaking loosely the slack reins drives over the heads of Scarlet Prelats, and such as are insolent to maintaine traditions, brusing their stiffe necks under his flaming wheels" (YP, 1:900). In his depiction of this chariot, Milton considers himself a poet who soars to transcendent heights. 4 Through his reformulation of the throne-chariot as a polemical device,

22 . CHILDREN OF EZEKIEL

Milton demonstrates not only the centrality of the biblical antecedent to his outlook but also the extent to which that antecedent permeated his own Reformation sensibility. At the same time, his reformulation becomes a pivotal moment in the anticipation of its epic counterpart. Because it is conceived specifically as a poetic rendering within a polemical context, the chariot of the antiprelatical tract suggests how the chariot of the epic is to be read. The Chariot of Zeale, in effect, provides a hermeneutic for the Chariot of Paternal Deitie. That hermeneutic is one in which the Chariot of Paternal Deitie will be viewed most profitably (if not inevitably) as a Reformation conceit. To understand the full significance of this idea, one must explore the Chariot of Zeale in greater depth. Of immediate significance is Milton's citing not only Ezekiel but also Saint John the Divine as the primary source for his conception of the Chariot of Zeale. Milton has in mind here Revelation 4, which is commonly looked on as a New Testament redaction of Ezekiel 1. 5 That it was so viewed among Reformation theologians may be seen in Henry Bullinger's A Hundred Sermons upon the Apocalypse (1573). Responding to Revelation 4, Bullinger observes: "The goodliest beastes do drawe the triumphant chariotes of Princes. Therefore by a lyke kinde of speache as is used among men, beastes are set to the throne of God. For God in hys Prophetes is caryed upon Cherubin, that is, in hys heavenly chariot. And Ezechiell . . . nameth openly Cherubin, beastes: and the whole texte proveth, that the place must be understoode of Gods chariot, drawen by beastes:'6 Milton's own association of Ezekiel's throne-chariot with the apocalyptic setting envisioned by Saint John the Divine is wholly consistent with what Katharine Firth sees as a major trend in Reformation thought. Among other crucial texts, Ezekiel and Revelation serve as the basis for the outlook espoused by the Reformers.? In the Apology for Smectymnuus, the specific occasion that prompts Milton to invoke the Chariot of Zeale is his desire to defend his stance as Reformation polemicist. Having been castigated for using language unbecoming an orator, Milton maintains that his "vehement vein [of] throwing out indignation, or scorn upon an object that merits it" is supported not only "by the rules of the best rhetoricians" but also by the "true Prophets of old," on the one hand, and "Christ himselfe;' on the other. Indeed, this "fountaine of meeknesse found acrimony anough to be still galling and vexing the Prelaticall Pharisees." Christ's "sanctifi'd bitternesse against the enemies of truth;' in turn, inspired the father of the Reformation, Martin Luther, "whom God made choice of before others to be of highest eminence and power in reforming the Church." Luther, comments Milton, "writ so vehemently against the chiefe defenders of old untruths

TECHNOLOGY OF THE INEFFABLE . 23

in the Romish Church, that his own friends and favourers were many time offended with the fierceness of his spirit." As antiprelatical polemicist, Milton becomes the heir to the Reformation fervor that inspired the "sanctifi'd bitternesse" of Luther. Infused with this bitterness, Milton transforms Ezekiel's throne-chariot into a polemical weapon that drives over the heads not only of the prelates but also of all who are "insolent to maintaine traditions" (Yp, 1:899-901). In this respect, the Chariot of Zeale is used as a means to explode tradition. Under the flaming wheels of the chariot, the stiff neck of conformity (cf. Exod. 33:5; Acts 7:51) gives way to the new spirit of a reforming zeal. For Milton, that zeal assumes meteoric proportions in the blazing figures that emerge from the zodiac of his imagination. Reducing from four to two the number of creatures envisioned in his sources, Milton singles out the lion and the man as best suited to his polemical purposes. Whereas the lion expresses "power, high autority and indignation;' the man signifies "derision and scorne" (Yp, 1:900). These qualities embody the essence of the Reformation fervor that Milton attributes to the chariot as a polemical device. Upholding the cause of the Reformation, the polemicist assumes at once the role of lion, the regal symbol of military prowess, and the role of man, the rational symbol of intellectual superiority. In this manner, the polemicist embarks on an enterprise of the most exalted sort, one in which the Chariot of Zeale is his ultimate weapon. It is his engine of destruction, and he wields it with a vehemence befitting one whose calling is to do battle with idolaters and corrupters of the church. In Paradise Lost, the spirit of idolatry, corruption, and blasphemy is, of course, dramatically manifested in the enemy of God, Satan, whose "argument blasphemous" Abdiel excoriates as a prelude to the War in Heaven (5.809). This blasphemous argument, in turn, assumes concrete form in the conduct of the war itself. Indeed, at the very outset of the war, Satan as consummate Blasphemer emerges in a vehicle that represents both an anticipatory parody of and an affront to the Chariot of Paternal Deitie. So the Blasphemer is beheld approaching in idolatrous splendor: High in the midst exalted as a God Th'Apostat in his Sun-bright Chariot sate Idol of Majestie Divine, enclos'd With flaming Cherubim, and golden Shields. (6.99-102)

By means of this "Sun-bright Chariot" Satan exalts himself in his idolatrous quest to unseat the true God, the true Lord of the Chariot. Enthroned in his own vehicle of blasphemy, the Blasphemer enters the fray in what might be

24 . CHILDREN OF EZEKIEL

called the Chariot of Satanic Deitie.~ From the perspective of Reformation polemic, the scene recalls Milton's castigation of the prelates in The Reason of Church-Government. As an example of their "profane insolence;' the prelates, says Milton, have mounted the church as a false idol on a "Prelaticall Cart," "drawn with rude oxen their officials, and their owne brute inventions" (Yp, 1:754-55).9 At the sight of Satan so mounted, Abdiel, newly returned from his first encounter with the Blasphemer, reasserts his zeal by delivering a blow to "the proud Crest of Satan," who recoils backward in amazement (6.188-94). As the first official act of physical retribution, Abdiel's blow anticipates that of the Son, just as Abdiel's zeal foreshadows the full manifestation of that attribute in the coming forth of the Son within the Chariot of Paternal Deitie. The conflict as a whole, in turn, is framed by the parodic chariot at the beginning of the battle and by the divine chariot at the end of the battle. Within the parodic chariot, Satan is enthroned as the very symbol of idolatry; within the divine chariot, the Son is enthroned as the very symbol of true worship. So framed, the conflict is waged by the adherents of idolatry, on the one hand, and the adherents of true worship, on the other. Ascending the Chariot of Paternal Deitie, only the Son himself can settle the conflict. In the portrayal of that event, Milton's Chariot of Zeale is transformed into a poetic construct. The language that portrays this remarkable event is replete with nuances that are endemic to the Reformation frame of mind. In fact, in the very wording of the argument to book 6, one hears the polemicist of the prose tracts speaking: "God on the third day sends Messiah his Son, for whom he had reserv'd the glory of that Victory: hee in the Power of his Father coming to the place ... with his Chariot and Thunder driving into the midst of his Enemies, pursues them unable to resist" (italics mine). It is the rhetoric of the potentia Dei that infuses both the language and the syntax here. The fiery zeal of the Reformation enthusiast inflames even the prose description that precedes the poetic account. What is anticipated in the argument is amply fulfilled in the poem. There, the rhetoric of power and might so crucial to the Reformation point of view is already present in God's commissioning of the Son: "Go then thou Mightiest in thy Fathers might, / Ascend my Chariot, guide the rapid Wheels ... / Pursue these sons of Darkness, drive them out / From all Heav'ns bounds into the utter Deep" (6.710-16). Obeying his Father's command, the Son responds in a language infused with zealous indignation: "Scepter and Power, thy giving, I assume" for "Whom thou hat'st, I hate, and can put on / Thy terrors, as I put thy mildness on / Image of thee in all things" (6.730-36). As I have established elsewhere, the Son's response is consistent with the transformation of the ira Dei (the Son as an embodiment of his Father's anger) into what might be called

TECHNOLOGY OF THE INEFFABLE • 25

the odium Dei (the Son as the embodiment of his Father's hatred).lO Perfectly in keeping with Reformation theology, such a transformation is viewed as the ultimate manifestation of a divine zeal to overcome all who would blaspheme God and his ways. II The odium Dei is the transcendent expression of God's anger: it is anger divinized as hate. The servants of God who possess it are empowered to exercise it to its fullest: "Do not I hate them, 0 Lord, that hate thee? ... I hate them with a perfect hatred" (Ps. 139:21-22). As Milton avers in De doctrina christiana, the exercise of such hatred, as occasion warrants, is "a religious duty; as when we hate the enemies of God or the church [odium etiam pium est; ut cum hostes Dei aut ecclesiae odio habemus]" (YP, 6:741-43; eM, 17:258-61).12 Rendered indomitable as an expression of the zeal to rid God of his enemies, such hatred assumes the form of utmost power by one who is commissioned to go "Mightiest in [his 1 Fathers might" as he ascends the Chariot of Paternal Deitie and drives out the "sons of Darkness" from "all Heav'ns bounds into the utter Deep." Assuming God's scepter and power, the Son as embodiment of both the ira Dei and the odium Dei accordingly puts on his Father's terrors and, armed with God's might, sets forth to "rid heav'n of these rebell'd" (6.730-37). The vehicle in which he rides is the dynamic embodiment of God's omnipotence. "Instinct with Spirit," the chariot rushes forth "with whirlwind sound." "Careering Fires" envelop the vehicle, which emits a "fierce Effusion" of "smoak and bickering flame and sparkles dire." Under the "burning Wheels" of the chariot, "the stedfast Empyrean" trembles. The propelling force is the Spirit of God, which infuses the fourfold creatures and gives them life. Their eyes glare lightning and shoot forth pernicious fire (6.749-850). This is an engine to be reckoned with indeed! As much as Milton spiritualizes the Chariot of Paternal Deitie, the language that is used to describe it ironically causes the vehicle to find its profane and debased counterparts in the very weapons of destruction invented by Satan and his crew. With its emphasis on "careering fires" and the "fierce Effusion" produced by "smoak and bickering flame and sparkles dire," the divine chariot becomes in effect God's answer to Satan's cannons. God might be said to counter demonic technology with a divine technology all his own. Once again, the idea is already present in the argument to book 6 of Milton's epic: Satan "calls a Councel, invents devilish Engines, which in the second dayes Fight put Michael and his Angels to some disorder." The faithful angels respond by pulling up mountains to overwhelm "both the force and Machins of Satan," but, of course, the tumult is not resolved until "God on the third day sends Messiah his Son" to conquer Satan through the power of the divine chariot.

26 . CHILDREN OF EZEKIEL

Clearly, the pulling up of mountains in a kind of Hesiodic titanomachia is not sufficient to destroy the forces of modern warfare in the form of those cannons. The clash of "ancient" and "modern" methods of warfare results only in chaos. To resolve the conflict, divine intervention is called for. In the very conception of that intervention resides the awareness of an engineering feat that finds its debased correspondence in the kind of perverse machinations that consume Satan and his crew as they set about to invent the implements of modern warfare, the technology of the new order.13 Probing deep beneath heaven's soil to discover the "materials dark and crude" with which to fashion "hollow Engins long and round / Thick-rammd," they forge combustible weapons capable of sending forth "from far with thundring noise" such "implements of mischief" that they "dash to pieces, and orewhelm whatever stands / Adverse." Satan hopes that the effect will be one of causing his enemies to fear that he and his crew have "disarmd / The Thunderer of his only dreaded bolt" (6.469-91). When completed, Satan's chariots of destruction are revealed disarmingly to the faithful angels, who suddenly behold "A triple-mounted row of Pillars laid / On Wheels." As these pillars are discharged, "immediate in a flame / But soon obscur'd with smoak, all Heav'n appeerd, / From those deep-throated Engins belcht" as they foully disgorge their "devilish glut, chained Thunderbolts and Hail/Of Iron Globes" (6.57289).14 In this manner, the wheeled conveyance is brought forth to overwhelm the enemy. IS Consistent with this impulse is the polemical justification afforded by all that the Chariot of Zeale represents. Milton invokes that chariot, we recall, to justify the "sanctifi'd bitternesse" that distinguishes his stance as polemicist. Through a zealous exercise of "power, high autority and indignation," on the one hand, and "derision and scorne," on the other, the polemicist counters the blasphemy, idolatry, and duplicity of the adversary. It is just this polemical dimension that underscores the Chariot of Paternal Deitie. If Milton does not conceive of that chariot as being propelled specifically by creatures visaged like a lion and a man, the polemical qualities that these creatures embody are implicit in the Chariot of Paternal Deitie nonetheless. We have already encountered at least two characteristics of the lion (authority and power) in God's commissioning of the Son to assume his Father's scepter and power. The third is discernible in the Son's command to the faithful angels before he attacks the Satanic crew: "stand onely and behold Gods indignation on these Godless pourd / By mee" (6.810-11). That indignation is aroused as a result of satanic despite and envy. "Not you but mee they have despis'd, / Yet envied" (6.812-13), the Son declares to the assembled faithful. The response of the Son is justified

TECHNOLOGY OF THE INEFFABLE .

27

outrage at Satan's behavior. By means of the Chariot of Paternal Deitie, the Son answers despite with despite in an outpouring of divine indignation. Such a response is in keeping with the characteristics that distinguish the second creature that propels the Chariot of Zeale: derision and scorn. If power, authority, and indignation are the hallmarks of the creature visaged like a lion, derision and scorn are the hallmarks of the creature visaged like a man. The counterpart of the regal is the supremely rational, here cast in its sublimest form. As we are well aware, derision and scorn underlie God's response to the foolishness of his enemies. "Mightie Father," says the Son, "thou thy foes / Justly hast in derision, and secure / Laugh'st at thir vain designes and tumults vain" (5.735-37). If God's enemies engage in their own form of derision and scorn (e.g., 6.628-33), it is God who has the last laugh. Accordingly, the Son not only overthrows the rebel host but effectively humiliates them as well. Overthrown, they are compared to "a Herd / Of Goats or timerous flock" (6.856-57), a simile that suggests just how pathetic Satan and his crew have become as a result of their encounter with the Chariot of Paternal Deitie. Whether the simile alludes to Jesus' exorcism of the devils who subsequently take up residence in a herd of swine that perish in the sea (Matt. 8:28-32) or to the separation of the sheep from the goats at the Last Judgment (Matt. 25:3133), as Arnold Stein long ago recognized, this moment represents "the grand finale of physical ridicule" that has been heaped on the rebel angels throughout. 16 One need only recall the crucial lines from Milton's translation of Psalm 2 to recognize the tone in which the event as a whole is to be understood: "He who in Heav'n doth dwell / Shall laugh, the Lord shall scoff them, then severe / Speak to them in his wrath, and in his fell / And fierce ire trouble them" (lines 8-11). When in the preface to the Animadversions Milton defends anger and laughter as the two most noble weapons of the polemicist (YP, 1:663-64), he no doubt has in mind that, from the divine point of view, they are characteristics of God's response to his enemies as well. In their most extreme form, they become an expression of the odium Dei. The transition from the political world of the polemicist to the poetic world of the epic poet could not be more compelling. In both respects, the Reformation underpinnings of the chariot are fully in evidence. If such is the case, then nowhere are those underpinnings more apparent than in the relation between Zeale as charioteer and the Son as charioteer. Ascending their respective chariots, each performs a function of fundamental importance to the Reformation frame of mind. As theological attribute, zeal for Milton is characterized by an ardent desire to sanctify the name of God, combined with an indignation against whatever might violate or betray a contempt of religion. 17 Its purpose is to cleanse religion of blasphemy. With its ethereal 28 .

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substance and diamond armor, Zeale finds its theological justification in the gospel. For those receptive to the dazzling power of the gospel, the Reformation experience will be one that results in a true visio Dei. For those corrupted by idolatry, the Reformation experience will be one that results in annihilation. In either case, zeal as theological attribute is exalted to a position of highest eminence as it "ascends" the "fiery Chariot" that goes forth to overwhelm the "Scarlet Prelats." When the Son "ascends" the Chariot of Paternal Deitie in Paradise Lost (6.762), he, in turn, is reenacting Zeale's "ascent" into the fiery chariot of Milton's prose tract. Attired in "Celestial Panoplie" of "radiant Urim" and (implicitly) Thummim (ef. Exod. 25:16, 28:30), the Son represents a fitting counterpart to his polemical forebear attired in "compleat diamond:' If the armor of Zeale is such to "dazle, and pierce" the "misty ey balls" with its radiance, the "divinely wrought" stones that grace the Son's armor do no less. Signifying, respectively, "light" and "perfection," Urim and Thummim appear on the "breastplate of judgment" worn by the high priest as emissary of God. As such, the function of these gems is oracular: through them, God manifests his will. In accord with the Son's ascent into the Chariot of Paternal Deitie in Paradise Lost, their purpose is to provide a visio Dei for the faithful and to enact a privatio Dei for the enemies of God, who are "cast out" from "blessed vision" into "utter darkness, deep ingulft," their place "ordained without redemption, without end" (5.613-15). Like the diamond armor of Zeale, then, the oracular armor of the Son reinforces his task of becoming the means of divine vision, on the one hand, and the source of purification, on the other. Given these circumstances, the implications of the Son's "ascent" in Paradise Lost are very much in keeping with the apocalyptic bearing of Zeale's earlier "ascent" in the Apology. So the Son ascends the Chariot of Paternal Deitie, "conquering, and to conquer": Attended with ten thousand thousand Saints, He onward came, farr off his coming shan, ... Hee on the wings of Cherub rode sublime On the Chrystallin Skie, in Saphir Thron'd, Illustrious farr and wide ... When the great Ensign of Messiah blaz'd Aloft by Angels born, his Sign in Heav'n. (6.767-76)

The eschatological basis of the Son's approach is reinforced by its biblical underpinnings: "And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of

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man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Matt. 24:30). The Son's ascent into the Chariot of Paternal Deitie presages the coming forth of the risen Christ to enact a final judgment at the end of time (cf. PL, 6.842-43; Rev. 6:16).18 The event is foretold by God to the Son in book 3 of Paradise Lost: "All knees to thee shall bow, of them that bide / In Heav'n, on Earth, or under Earth in Hell; / When thou attended gloriously from Heav'n / Shalt in the Sky appeer" to "judge / Bad men and Angels," who "shall sink / Beneath thy Sentence" (lines 321-32). Those who originally refused to bow their knees in response to the Son's begetting (5.600-616) will surely bow them in response to his renewed exaltation at the Last Judgment. In the salvation history that the Son's ascent into the Chariot of Paternal Deitie encapsulates, the eschatology that was so much a part of the fervor of Milton's prose tracts makes itself felt yet once more as epic event. In its transmuted form, that event, however, is no longer bound by the political aspirations that distinguished Milton's prose. Transcending the eschatology that looked forward to the establishment of a civitas Dei in this world, the eschatology of the epic embraces a Reformation fervor far more profound. It is this fervor that the Chariot of Paternal Deitie embodies. Tracing its lineage to Reformation theology in general and to Milton's polemical formulations in particular, the Chariot of Paternal Deitie assumes renewed significance within the context that the epic poet provides for it. If its forebear is the Chariot of Zeale of the prose tracts, its new impetus is the result of a Reformation fervor chastened by the collapse of an entire political system. From the perspective of Milton's early aspirations for political reform, its milieu, then, is marked by the darkness and dangers that encompass the epic poet in his latter days. From the perspective of Milton's renewed faith in a polity that cannot be compromised, however, its milieu is marked by an illumination that represents a source of lasting hope. Despite what Milton in Paradise Lost calls the "savage clamor" wrought by "the barbarous dissonance / Of Bacchus and his revellers" (7.3436), the Chariot of Paternal Deitie rushes forth with a momentum undreamed of by the polemicist who originally conceived a fiery Chariot of Zeale that would crush the corrupt and idolatrous enemies of the Commonwealth. If the act of poiesis transforms the ineffable into trope, the zeal that drives this act finds its counterpart in the belief that trope can be realized as "thing:' that the "machine" dwelling within the mysterium can be brought forth into the realm of being. What is required is the disposition to "invent." For Milton, this is a Satanic disposition, to be sure. It results in things like gunpowder and cannons. As much as the Chariot of Paternal Deitie might appear to eschew

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such an impulse, there remains a residue of gunpowder in God's smoke. Invention is a poiesis in which techne is realized not just as trope but as thing. Ezekiel's vision exists as much by virtue of its "thingness" as it does by virtue of its tropology. Satanic or not, the impulse to invent actual things has its place as well. This fact is given full expression in the centuries following the production of the Chariot of Paternal Deitie. Following hard on that chariot are other chariots equally as remarkable and equally as indebted to Ezekiel's visio Dei for their inspiration. An account of those chariots will take us on a journey of exploration into the realms of invention. Those realms will disclose the wonders of techne that are the products of a quest for mastery through which those who seek to harness the powers latent in the visionary view themselves as gods. With their grand designs, their grand schemes, their grand machines, the purveyors of techne are empowered to subdue, if not to annihilate, all who stand in their way. In their hands, the throne-chariot of Ezekiel as a fully mechanized vehicle knows no bounds, no limits. It is able to accomplish whatever its inventor sets forth to perform. A case in point is Melchior Bauer, an eighteenth-century German inventor of flying machines. 19 Born in 1733 at the village of Lehnitzsch near Altenburg, Bauer journeyed to London in 1763 to seek the patronage of the recently crowned King George III. Hoping to finance construction of his design for a man-powered aircraft, he was, according to his own account, not able to get beyond the official scribe, who refused to copy out the submission because of its apparent folly. Undaunted by this rebuff, Bauer returned to his native Germany, where he attempted to gain the ear of Frederick the Great in Potsdam. It was not, however, the best of times to appeal for royal favor, Frederick being consumed with the responsibilities arising out of the aftermath of the Seven Years' War and with the troubles of a battered economy. Although it was customary for Frederick's officials to forward the plans of any promising new invention to the Academy of Science for investigation and assessment, Bauer was not even granted this sign of recognition and accordingly fared worse on his own native soil than he did on foreign soil. Failing to gain royal favor, Bauer desperately attempted one last time to acquire venture capital for his fledgling enterprise. He appealed to Count Heinrich XI of Reuss, the ruler of his local district of Thuringia. In a fresh submission, he recounted his earlier disappointments, included his unsuccessful letter to Frederick the Great, and provided diagrams for his invention. Along with the tribulations that he encountered in gaining support for his design, he also detailed at great length the scope and purpose of the invention itself. This is the substance of his manuscript "Die

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Flugzeughandschrift des Melchior Bauer;' now located in the Staatsarchiv, Weimar.20 According to the testimony of the manuscript, Bauer sought to construct with his own hands a flying machine or Cherubwagen "just in the shape in which the holy prophet Ezekiel saw it with his godly eyes." The various creatures that distinguish the carriage (the eagle, the lion, the ox, and the human) bring to mind for Bauer the universality of what he would replicate. In this sense, the carriage finds its counterpart in the ark of Noah: "Just as all mankind now travels over the water on the instrument of Noah," comments Bauer, "so it will be with this carriage." Moving from its universality to the materials of its construction, Bauer, the prototypical engineer and avatar of techne, proceeds to literalize the spirit of vision into the matter of substance: "The things from which I can make this carriage;' he declares, "are fir wood, woven silk, and brass wire." All these materials are readily available to the artisan of the visionary. As a true technocrat faced with the prospect of deadlines, he boasts that he can complete the work within three or four months' time, but to do so he would require the appropriate construction facilities (factory, tools, and the like) afforded by the venture capital he seeks. 21 One assumes that, under these circumstances, mass production would not be out of the question. With the material he specifies for construction, he plans to construct a canopy that resembles two outspread wings of a bird, with each wing "7 ells long and 5 ells wide." By means of such a canopy, the whole carriage would be able to soar into the air with a man in it. With his hands steering it wherever he wishes, the pilot propels it through the air with two other movable wings. In keeping with the tumultuous sounds of Ezekiel's vision, Bauer's carriage would likewise make "a great rushing and thundering" noise. This noise would be produced, observes Bauer, "because everything is light and drawn tight with wire, and is made so taut that the wires ring." When the pilot who stands in the carriage flaps the wings strongly, the carriage moves on its wheels so quickly that, with its outstretched canopy, it cuts its way up into the air and soars like a bird that holds its wings steadily spread. Because the carriage stands on four large wheels, it should be launched from a smooth hill or from a broad, smooth expanse of ice, whereupon it will fly swiftly into the air like an ascending swan, at sharp angles, as it carries the rest of the structure along with it. When the work is completed, promises Bauer, "it will in all things most clearly resemble what the holy prophet Ezekiel saw and described." Accompanying Bauer's proposals are detailed illustrations of the fuselage, the canopy and stay wires, the hinges, and the wings. Cross sections, side elevations, and front elevations provide a sense of dimensionality as well as "scientific" verisimilitude. 22 Had

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the flying machine ever been constructed, the result would have been "a parasol-winged monoplane of low aspect ratio." Standing in a short, fourwheeled fuselage fixed below, the pilot would have been the sale source of power, as he flapped an additional pair of compound wings, the span of which would have been about half that of the main plane. Unlike most other ornithopter wings, Bauer's flappers would have been firmly secured from tip to tip on rigid spars, with the result that one wing would have risen while the other descendedY As we might well expect, the enthusiasm with which Melchior Bauer described and illustrated his plans was intensified by a religious fervor of the most strident sort. A zealous evangelical Protestant with an obsessive hatred of Catholicism, Bauer drew inspiration from the biblical original not simply to construct an aerodynamically sound mechanism. He likewise sought inspiration from Ezekiel as a biblical prophet in order to channel his own fierce hatred of the popish enemy, indeed, his hatred of all those he looked on as adversaries of the church he embraced. Clive and Helen Hart observe that Bauer "did not want to fly merely for the joy of it. He expressly and emphatically believed that he was inventing a new and virtually invincible war machine which would enable any Protestant prince to eradicate the curse of the ungodly Catholics." His own testimony represents ample evidence of his feelings on this score: his invention "is nothing other than a victory or triumphal carriage over the antichristian Pope who is still ruling with his accomplices, and over the unbelieving, idolatrous heathen."24 Through the use of this carriage, Bauer declares, "the word of God and the pure gospel will be kindled and spread throughout the whole world, as God himself promised, among the Jews, the Turks, and the heathen. For as all commentators explain, it is a carriage of victory:' The carriage of God will disperse a thousand enemies, two of them will make ten thousand fly, and before five such carriages all the enemies of the Lord will flee. Accordingly, the construction of such weapons of mass destruction "may with justice be called the greatest of all the arts, since by its means God will destroy and overthrow the kingdom of Antichrist and will help mankind to reach complete salvation and righteousness."25 Melchior Bauer would have been no stranger to the military-industrial complex. In fact, he might be looked on as its founding father. Drawing on my discussion of Milton's own Chariot of Paternal Deitie, I might suggest that in Melchior Bauer one discovers the material embodiment of the odium Dei. For Bauer, all the destructive forces of that divine odium find release in his invention. Deriving inspiration from its visionary wellspring in the prophecy of Ezekiel, Bauer's merkabah as flying machine is thereby the

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consummate heir of that technological mastery that Jacques Ellul views as a derangement. When Melchior Bauer sought support from Frederick the Great in Potsdam, Frederick's war counselor rudely dismissed the inventor in the following terms: "The fiery fever has turned your head .... My dear man, are you not now fearful for your sanity? But I pity you from the heart for having fixed such a mad scheme into your head, for to all appearances you are a sensible fellow. If you had not given me your text I would not have believed you to be so great a foo1:'26 Despite what Frederick's war counselor might have thought of Bauer and the enthusiasm he embodied, however, the German inventor remains important as a symbol of the impulse to technologize the ineffable and thereby to harness its forces. As presumptuous (if not sacrilegious) as his designs might appear to be to those who would cast aspersions on his putative invention, there is something noble in what Bauer would attempt, something eminently consistent with that sense of "workmanship" or "construction" implicit in the vision that Ezekiel himself beheld. As poietes or "maker:' Bauer resorts to the original visionary material in order to allow aletheia to occur. Doing so, he becomes a technologist of the visionary. Through him, we experience in all its glory one event in "the saga of the unconcealment of what is." In terms of the traditions of merkabah mysticism, Bauer affiliates himself with those riders in the chariot that underscore the quest for transcendence so characteristic of their kind. As a modern, however, Bauer is not simply content to ride in the chariot. True to his calling, he feels compelled to invent and construct it as well. Presuming to discover in Ezekiel's vision the means of harnessing its astounding forces, he distinguishes himself as the "technologist" par excellence. In their study of Melchior Bauer, Clive and Helen Hart accordingly view his designs as prophetic of later aeronautical advances. For their part, Bauer's designs, in fact, are "an invention of true genius," and, had his manuscript been more widely read, "its many insights might well have accelerated the design of heavier-than-air machines in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries:'27 The point is that inherent in the inaugural vision as originally conceived and executed is an impulse that inclines us to suspend our judgment regarding what can be considered normative and what not. Although we are disposed to offer sympathy for the point of view expressed by Frederick the Great's war counselor, we must also take account of the fact that Bauer's designs actually do have technological substance. As much as that which can be considered technological is indebted to the visionary, there is obviously a fine line between sanity and madness, normative and nonnormative. Assuming with Martin Heidegger that

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it is the function of the technological to bring forth what is concealed to "the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where aletheia, truth, happens;' in his own unique way Melchior Bauer certainly confirms the Heideggerian proposition. Correspondingly, if an account of the transformations that Ezekiel's inaugural vision has undergone in the modern era is a chapter in the history of madness, then the children of Ezekiel confirm the idea that fools and prophets really do share the same characteristics. When Erasmus wrote his Moriae Encomium, he knew very well that he was dealing with a double-edged sword: the Apostles themselves, Folly reminds us, "seem'd to be drunk with new wine, and ... Paul appeared to Festus to be mad."28 Should the present study likewise be considered a moriae encomium, let us remember that the fools it canonizes might well be prophets, toO.29 What they prophesy is the advent of all those technological wonders that distinguish the "modern;' particularly that aspect characterized by the onset of the Industrial Revolution. One manifestation of this idea is discernible as the result of the advent of travel by railroad in nineteenth-century England, an event that is characteristically viewed as a crowning achievement of the Industrial Revolution. T. S. Ashton observes, "The locomotive railway was the culminating triumph of the technical revolution: its effects on the economic life of Britain and, indeed, on the world have been profound:'30 This observation has been endorsed by a host of studies that have explored the railway system and its impact on future generationsY For our purposes, no study is more nearly germane than Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden. Although Marx's focus is primarily on America, his concern with the effect of the Industrial Revolution on nineteenth-century England is correspondingly compelling. A crucial symbol of that effect is the locomotive as the supreme manifestation of the impulse to technologize. Associated with fire, smoke, speed, iron, and noise, the locomotive is the "leading symbol" of industrial power. If the invention of the steamboat was exciting, it paled by comparison to the railroad. What was true of the 1830S in America was no less true of the same period in England: the locomotive, "an iron horse or fire-Titan;' was becoming a national obsession. The Industrial Revolution incarnate, the locomotive gave rise to its own mythology. "Stories about railroad projects, railroad accidents, railroad profits, railroad speed fill [ed] the press." As a subject of discourse, the locomotive became the focus of songs, political speeches, and magazine articles, both factual and fictional. It symbolized the "unprecedented release of human energy in science, politics, and everyday life:' Equipped with this new power, humans were able "to realize the dream of abundance:' In fact, "the entire corpus of intoxicated prose" that extolled the

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virtues of the locomotive made it clear that all hopes for happiness and wellbeing were dependent on technology. This discourse is what Marx aptly calls "the rhetoric of the technological sublime."32 It is this rhetoric that unabashedly celebrated the forces unleashed by the Industrial Revolution and its faith in the efficacy of progress. Such faith even went so far as to look on the invention of the locomotive as an act tantamount to the creation of a poem. Indeed, "one recurrent assertion is that all the other arts rest upon the mechanic arts." As such, inventions are seen to be "the poetry of physical science, and inventors are the poets." So it was maintained by one contemporary account in 1831 that very much the same sort of genius and intellect was required "to invent a new machine, as was necessary for the inspiration of a poem, and whether a man be a poet or inventor of machinery, is more the result of circumstances, or the age in which he chances to live, than in a difference of mental organization:' That zeal assumes a mythic, indeed, oracular bearing in the rhetoric of the time. It is as if "machine power" fulfills what Marx calls "ancient mythic prophecy." Such is especially true for the railroad, which is seen as the true liberator of the New World. 33 Among the locomotive systems in nineteenth-century England able to lay claim to the distinction of fostering the spirit of enterprise and discovery that infused the Industrial Revolution is the Liverpool and Manchester railway. It was on this newly constructed railway in 1829, says Ashton, "that the potentialities of steam transport were fully realized:'34 In a vivid contemporary account of the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway, John Francis describes the high drama of the event. "The 15th of September, 1830, will be memorable in the history of railways," he declares, for on that day the Liverpool and Manchester railway was officially opened. People flocked before sunrise to the parts where the best view could be obtained. Nobility was present; members of the senate were present. "The engines with waving flags and bright colours, added to the scene, and curiosity was at its height when the carriages started." As they gathered in groups that lined the tracks and mixed sociably together, all were innocently "unsuspicious of the extraordinary power which they were witnessing" and thus totally ignorant of "the danger which menaced them" with the approaching train, appropriately called the Rocket.35 Despite the ensuing accidental deaths of those who were not careful, the enterprise was eventually a resounding commercial success. With this remarkable triumph of technology, happiness and prosperity ensued! In an encomium that celebrates the many successes of the Liverpool and Manchester railway, an anonymous tract fittingly places the advent of this

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phenomenon within the context of the visionary mode. Titled An Illustration of Ezekiel's Vision of the "Chariot," ... Its Literal Meaning, Utility, and Fulfilment, in the Nineteenth Century. Respectfully Dedicated to all the Tribes of Israel, Wherever Dispersed; and to the Public in General (1843), this tract bears witness to the concept of techne as a visionary construct in the nineteenth century. According to the author, the chariot of Ezekiel prefigures the invention of "railroads and railway conveyance by locomotive carriages:' In accord with this idea, Ezekiel "shows clearly" that the "component parts" of the chariot "were of iron and burnished brass, containing inwardly fire, without consuming itself'fire of coals!' sufficiently large and active to send upwards a lengthened wreath upon wreath, a crystal-coloured cloud, and their centre to be of burnished brass, sparkling, as with lightning speed they [the living creatures 1winged their way, emitting sparks as from forged iron, instinct with a vital spirit, unknown till steam and its powerful effects were disclosed to man, by the manifold wisdom of God." In our own day, "we see the 'living creatures' ... rushing straight forward, with lightning speed, panting as with life and voice of speech; doubts and conjectures flee before incontestible proof, and in the living creature before us, our astonished senses behold the perfect vision" of the locomotive. The author thereafter concludes by observing that the prophet Ezekiel has with his vision of the chariot inspired "an almost supernatural zeal and enthusiasm" in "all classes of scientific men" and has thereby excited an "extraordinary confidence" in the "minds of capitalists." The Liverpool and Manchester railway cost an enormous sum "advanced with a willingness, such indeed, as Omnipotence only could instill, command, or extend at a given period, not confining this period of enterprise and adventure to place or nation, but carrying out His vast designs into all lands, wheresoever the scattered tribes of his people, Israel are sojourning, until their warfare is accomplished and they return in triumph to the land of their forefathers."36 Remarkable in its own right as a testimony to the powerful, if not visionary, coincidence of technological innovation and the capitalist spirit, this treatment of Ezekiel's inaugural vision is even more remarkable as an act of "technopoetics:' Not content simply to rely on Ezekiel's vision as a prefiguration of the wonders it extols, the tract invokes a poetic document to support its contentions. Specifically, it calls on Paradise Lost, the epic of that prophet of prophets, John Milton, who is asked to take his place beside Ezekiel as the oracle of the locomotive. What the author of the tract has in mind, of course, is Milton's own Chariot of Paternal Deitie. Responding to this vehicle, the author declares: "Milton's inspired mind had conceived" an engine comparable to the locomo-

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tive "long before, in all its bearings and utility, as a conveyance for tens of thousands." This declaration is then followed by a lengthy quote from Paradise Lost depicting the Chariot of Paternal Deitie itself.37 Milton would no doubt have been amused. Although he might well have had second thoughts about endorsing such a reading of his poem, he would have been sympathetic to the notion of seeing in his own conception the sublime "machine" that he himself derives from the original visionary material underlying Ezekiel's vision. As I have already suggested, what is so noteworthy about the Miltonic vehicle is its "machineness." Although sublimated, spiritualized, and deified, it is a machine nonetheless: self-propelled, it harnesses incalculable energy and force that give off a "fierce Effusion" of "smoak and bickering flame, and sparkles dire" (6.766-72). This is an astounding mechanism indeed! As a war machine, Milton's chariot is simply not to be withstood. Every eye within it glares lightning and shoots forth "pernicious fire / Among th'accurst;' who are likewise overcome by the thunder that the charioteer sends before him (6.836-38).

As we have seen, that which renders the Chariot of Paternal Deitie so effective as an example of sublime technology is its assimilation of the paraphernalia of modern warfare, which it sublimates and spiritualizes to achieve its own ends. Specifically, the terrible thunder and the "fierce Effusion" of smoke and flame and sparkles suggest precisely the sort of armaments with which Milton was familiar in the battles that raged during the Civil Wars. Incorporating and transforming these armaments to accord with its conception of the divine, the Chariot of Paternal Deitie establishes a context in which the original prophetic substratum of the inaugural vision is to be understood anew. This renewed understanding reflects (and implicitly comments on) what might be called the technological innovations of the modern age. It is no accident that, when G. Wilson Knight published the Chariot of Wrath in the significant year 1942, he saw in the Chariot of Paternal Deitie the embodiment of The Message of fohn Milton to Democracy at War, as he subtitled his book. In this respect, Knight's enthusiastic response to Milton's chariot is particularlyappropriate: "Messiah's God-empowered chariot is a transcendental conception deriving from Old Testament prophecy, but also incorporating and driving to the limit Milton's habitual fascination with the military and the mechanical. It is at once a super-tank and a super-bomber, forecasting contemporary inventions just as the Greek myth of Pegasus, or of Daedalus and Icarus, forecasts air-mastery in general." The Chariot of Paternal Deitie, Knight concludes, thereby "remains a superb conception and one to which our own experience of mechanised war, on land and in the air, may serve as an approach."38

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Knight is not alone in responding in this manner to the technological implications of visionary material. In more recent times, the Israelis engaged in a technopoetics of their own. Although they obviously did not have Milton's chariot in mind, their thinking was certainly in accord with Milton's when they elected to resort to the biblical text in order to provide a nomenclature for their own artillery. Doing so, they applied the name merkabah to the powerful tanks that swept into Lebanon and routed the Palestinians in 1982. Equipped with observation periscopes, gunners' optics, white and infrared driving lights, a laser range fighter, and a special tank driver audio command system, the Israeli merkabah tanks are a force to be reckoned with. 39 As such, they represent compelling evidence that the impulse to technologize the ineffable is as powerful in our own times as it was in Milton's age and beyond. In order better to understand the rationale underlying the decision to adopt the biblical nomenclature for these particular tanks, I wrote directly to Major General Israel Tal, the assistant defense minister of the Israeli Defense Force (mF). In my letter of 5 June 1985, I informed General Tal that I had called the Office of the Consulate General of Israel in Chicago, which informed me that, as the designer of the tanks, he was the person with whom I should consult. In response to my inquiry, I received a letter dated 15 July 1985 from Ze'ev Klein, assistant to General Tal. Klein informed me that my inquiry was referred to him because of his "extensive knowledge of the development and manufacture of the Merkava tank:'40 According to Klein, this tank dates back as early as 1968, a period in which he "had the honor to serve in General Tal's armoured division." Under the leadership of General Tal, Israel determined, in August 1970, to develop and manufacture its own tank, modified to the "special and unique needs" of the nation. The development of such a tank would help establish Israel's tank industry as well. Because of a desire to underscore the significance of that decision, General Tal, together with Major General Goren, then the IDF'S chief rabbi, chose a biblical name for the tank. This name would symbolize not only the strength embodied in the tank but also its salvific role. These qualities, Klein observes, are embodied in the name Merkava, as the tank was designated, "with the hope that the tank would provide the LD.F. the especially needed strength and salvation in whatever future war [might be] forced upon Israel by its enemies." Evincing a sense of religious and prophetic fervor, Klein concludes with this flourish: "Israel now has a defensive weapon, a tank, that gives expression to her physical power and spiritual determination to defend herself until peace with all her neighbors will prevail." To provide insight into the interpretive processes through which the mer-

TECHNOLOGY OF THE INEFFABLE .

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kabah tanks received their names, Klein accompanies his observations with an act of biblical exegesis. He cites those instances in the Hebrew Bible in which the actual term merkabah appears specifically as a manifestation of the qualities of strength and salvation with which the IDF sought to imbue its tanks. The first instance arises from 2 Sam. 15=1 ("••• Absalom prepared him chariots and horses ..."). According to Klein, this text underlies the merkabah as a chariot of war, that is, a war vehicle that is a man-made product. The second instance arises from Isa. 66:15 ("... and his chariots like the stormwind") and Hab. 3:8 ("... upon thy chariot of victory-salvation in Hebrew ..."). These texts, according to Klein, underlie the merkabah as a chariot of salvation, "a chariot of fire, a chariot of victory, a concept which expresses the creation of the Almighty, much like the creation of the Universe:' Conceived in this way, salvation, Klein comments, "will come with the LORD, and the chariot is merely a symbol of God's strength and salvation." Noticeably absent from Klein's references is the first chapter of Ezekiel. Considering the contexts that have been developed in this study, one might immediately be inclined to question the omission of so crucial a text. The obvious reason for such an omission is, nonetheless, the most compelling one. Klein does not mention Ezekiel's vision as a biblical source for the naming of the IDF'S merkabah tanks because, in the most literal sense, there is no merkabah in Ezekiel 1, as there is in the biblical sources he mentions. In his citation of texts as sources of the merkabah, Klein is being eminently scrupulous. His is an omission that attests to the fact that, from a biblical perspective, the merkabah, as an artifact both human and divine, exists by name elsewhere in Hebrew Scriptures but is nowhere mentioned by name in the Hebrew text of Ezekiel. This absence of denomination returns us to the observations ventured earlier. Despite the striking technological dimensions of Ezekiel's vision as a phenomenon that moves irresistibly toward concretization and cries out for objectification, for individuation, for the bestowal of a name, the term merkabah is an appellation that is the product of later generations. The merkabah that resides within Ezekiel's vision is the chariot that subsumes all other chariots, biblical and postbiblical alike. In technological terms, it is the profoundest expression of techne to have emerged from the-substratum of the biblical text. It is present even more compellingly by virtue of its trace, that is, by virtue of its very absence from the exegetical discourse of Ze'ev Klein, who may neglect to acknowledge it as an immediate biblical source for the naming of the Israeli tanks but who cannot deny it as in fact the ultimate source of all sources. With the emphasis that Klein places on the qualities of strength and salvation in the conceptualization of the IDF'S merkabah tanks, moreover, one finds

40 • CHILDREN OF EZEKIEL

what appears to be a remarkable instance of the throne-chariot as a modern wonder of technology. In keeping with Milton's chariot, the merkabah tanks bring to the fore all the zeal that distinguishes the Commonwealth polemicist as the most ardent defender of the Good Old Cause. Both the Israeli spokesman and the poet of Paradise Lost view the biblical text as a means of extolling the regenerative and salvific virtues of what G. Wilson Knight calls the chariot of wrath. Lurking beneath that conception, however, are all the anxieties, if not the excesses, that distinguish the likes of Melchior Bauer with his plans for a flying machine, invented for the purpose of ridding the world of all those unbelieving, idolatrous heathens. In this respect, one is again reminded of the psychopathology of such figures as Edwin Broome's Schreberian psychotic, plagued by visions of influencing machines, with their rays, searchlights, and other paraphernalia of mental disintegration. Responding to the disturbing implications of these influencing machines, one might question the extent to which the merkabah as a modern instrument of warfare represents a concrete realization of the anxiety dream experienced by the exiled prophet on the shores of the Chebar. Whatever such instruments of warfare do represent, they are one more compelling instance of the way in which techne finds full expression in today's world as a profound manifestation of the visionary experience.

TECHNOLOGY OF THE INEFFABLE . 41

The

Psycho-

pathology

of the

Bizarre

2

If the Israeli merkabah tanks represent one extreme to which the impulse to technologize the ineffable is liable to extend in modern times, there are other extremes that must be taken into account, extremes that reflect the immense range of responses to which a reading of Ezekiel's inaugural vision as techne gives rise. Among those responses, none is more significant than the unidentified flying object (or UFO), conceived as an expression of the inaugural vision of Ezekiel.! To undertake a discussion of UFOS in general and Ezekiel's vision as a UFO in particular is not without its dangers as a scholarly enterprise. 2 Despite the vast literature to which the subject of UFOS has given rise, the very idea of venturing into this area threatens to render any serious discussion of such material immediately suspect. 3 In part, this is because of the extent to which the whole domain of UFOS has been appropriated by legions of mountebanks, an appropriation that has succeeded in causing the subject and those inclined to explore it to become guilty by association. The consensus is generally that the so-called UFO phenomenon is most properly the domain of the National En-

quirer and tabloids of that nature. Even if this were the case, the culture distinguished by such a venue is itself entirely worthy of exploration on its own terms. Mountebanks and tabloids have their place, too, as a crucial dimension of what defines popular culture. As we shall see, this dimension becomes particularly important in any assessment of Ezekiel's vision as an expression of the technological impulse in the modern world. To be sure, the UFO phenomenon is hardly the exclusive domain of mountebanks and tabloids. It is also the domain of those legitimately interested in the sociological, psychological, and religious implications of this phenomenon throughout history and in more recent times. In this respect, the work of Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter is a case in point. Their book When Prophecy Fails is a landmark in the sociology of the UFO phenomenon and those who have embraced it.41t is crucial as an actual case study of a group of contactees active during and after 1949. The prophet of the group is a suburban housewife named Marian Keech, and its main proponents include Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Armstrong, adepts in the area of mysticism, the occult, and ufology. Establishing direct contact with this group, the authors provide a detailed description of the dynamics through which the group operates, attracts proselytes, spreads the word of its prophecy of impending doom, and sustains the burden of demise when the prophecy does not come to pass. At the center of Mrs. Keech's experience of extraterrestrial life stands the impending visitation of the "tola" or spaceship. To prepare Mrs. Keech for this visitation, the extraterrestrials cause her hand to write the following message: "The cast oflight you see in the southern sky is of our direction and is pulsating with a turning, spinning motion of the craft of the 'tola.' " The message makes clear that this vehicle is to land at a precise time and place: "It will be as if the world was coming to an end at the field when the landing occurs." Those who behold the craft "will not believe their senses when they see the craft of outer space in the midst of the field."5 The arrival of the craft with its turning, spinning motion will be tantamount to a visio Dei. As the contactee who first makes the impending presence of the spacecraft known and who disseminates the knowledge of its arrival, Marian Keech the suburban housewife becomes the true prophet of the new order. In the terms that have become familiar to us in this study, she assumes the role of the prophet on the banks of the Chebar who articulates her own vision of that vehicle thereafter known as the merkabah. That Mrs. Keech's prophecy fails is of little consequence to the present undertaking. That she experiences a visio Dei whose lineage can be traced to her biblical forebear is of the first moment. Glancing at her ancestry, Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter, in fact, sketch a

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF THE BIZARRE •

43

kind of messianic history of millennial movements stemming from groups such as the Montanists up to the Shabbetaianists. 6 In one form or another, the experiences of these millennialists populate history. It has been the particular concern of the computer scientist and astrophysicist Jacques Vallee, among others, to plot their course.? Vallee's Passport to Magonia and Dimensions, for example, provide fascinating narratives of such UFO experiences, extending from the Middle Ages to more recent times. The originary milieu of these experiences is the vision of Ezekiel. In fact, Vallee characteristically initiates his historical discourse on the whole subject by citing Ezekiel's vision and then proceeding to delineate various transformations of it in the recorded experiences of contactees from the Middle Ages onward. 8 Among the examples of "ancient encounters" that Vallee cites is Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, one of the most celebrated and learned clerics of the ninth century. Agobard wrote of coming on a mob in the process of stoning three men and a woman accused oflanding in a "cloudship" from the celestial region known as Magonia. 9 Is this cloudship in some sense related to the chariot Ezekiel beheld? Vallee asks. Are the mysterious creatures who fly through the sky and land in their cloudships of the same kind as the angelic creatures seen by Ezekiel? Questions of this sort engage Vallee throughout his narrative of the so-called ancient encounters. Vallee concludes with the following questions, to which he provides the only answer he finds suitable: "Is the mechanism of UFO apparitions, then, an invariant in all cultures? Are we faced here with another reality that transcends our limited notions of space and time? I see no better hypothesis at this point of our knowledge of UFO phenomena." What results is "a pattern of manifestations, opening the gates to a spiritual level, pointing a way to a different consciousness, and producing irrational, absurd events in their wake." For Vallee, all the recorded incidents of encounters throughout history "seem to imply a technology capable of both physical manifestation and psychic effects, a technology that strikes deep at the collective consciousness, confusing us, molding us-as perhaps it confused and molded human civilizations in antiquity:'10 It is in the literalizing of the visionary experience, that is, in the conviction that Ezekiel's vision actually was the result of a visitation by astronauts from outer space, that the impulse to technologize the ineffable reveals what might be called its most aberrant form. Here, the inaugural vision assumes paramount importance as a technological phenomenon of truly remarkable proportions, particularly among those inclined to foster their own myth of the machine based on the unimpeachable authority of biblical precedence. This idea becomes ironically apparent in the arena of popular culture, that

44 .

CHILDREN OF EZEKIEL

is, of the tabloid and the motion picture. As an expression of Ezekiel's vision, the UFO phenomenon has indeed become such a staple of these venues that it makes its appearance in the most remarkable and, indeed, unexpected of forms. One need only recall the appearance of Ezekiel's vision in the film version of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982). Lying out under the stars on a beautiful Texas night, Mona Strangely (acted by Dolly Parton), captivating proprietor of the Chicken Ranch, and her lover, Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd (acted by Burt Reynolds), admire the evening sky. Suddenly, they witness a shooting star, as Mona Strangely excitedly points heavenward. Recalling her "strange" girlhood fantasies as an abductee of sorts transported to heaven by alien creatures, Mona is then moved to recite with the consummate accuracy of a religious acolyte the opening verses of Ezekiel: ''And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire ... :' Utterly perplexed by this performance, Ed Earl exclaims, "What the hell you talking about!" To this, Mona righteously responds: "That's from the Bible. That's what the Bible says about the spaceships in Ezekiel. Don't you know nothin' 'bout the Bible?" Of course, he knows about the Bible, Ed Earl protests. It's just that he hasn't come into contact with this Ezekiel fellow! II On a more exalted plane, the world of popular culture has been made familiar with UFOS through the work of Steven Spielberg, whose fascination with the phenomenon of extraterrestrial visitations has a long history. Most notably recorded in his films Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E. T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), this fascination has brought to life a sense of childlike wonder in the otherworldly realms that are suddenly within reach of the mundane. Close Encounters is a case in point. Here, Spielberg was able to project onto the experience of contact with childlike but mysterious creatures from outer space a remarkable feeling of dreamlike serenity. As Frank Rich observes, what animates this film is the "breathless sense of wonder" that Spielberg brings to each frame. The film "is a celebration not only of children's dreams but also of the movies that help fuel those dreams."12 Much of the fascination of the film derives from the extent to which the quotidian circumstances that define the lives and experiences of the characters (particularly those of the protagonist, Roy Neary, played by Richard Dreyfuss) are transformed through the otherworldly encounter with the visionary. Culminating in that transformative experience, the film moves to a point of apotheosis in which all dreams of ascent to the supernal realms are actually realized. Roy Neary walks forward "deep into the fiery heart of the mystery;' as the "brilliant opening" of the mother ship slides shut and the vehicle ascends

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF THE BIZARRE • 45

"through layer after layer of clouds" until "this great city in the sky" becomes "the brightest of the brightest stars." 13 The vehicle that transports the protagonist, among others, to the realm beyond the stars is conceived as a mysterious phenomenon that emits a splendid array of lights swirling in circular motions around a cloudlike center, as wheels within wheels. Exuding light from within the cloud, and surrounded by swirling lights, the phenomenon becomes "deep amber." This, the narrator of the novelized form of Close Encounters observes, "was an extraordinary sight, a vision that seemed to flash and swirl with meaning."14 A phenomenon specifically designated "a vision," that which is beheld by Spielberg's fugitive characters ensconced within the foothills of Devil's Tower, Wyoming, replicates in its own way that awesome sight encountered by the exiled prophet on the shores of the Chebar: "a great cloud with brightness round about it and fire flashing forth continually." In the middle of this fire is that which appears like "gleaming amber" (Ezek. 1:4). Surrounded by its own fires, the "deep amber" mysterium that Spielberg envisions emanates a bashmal all its own (figs. 3-4). In keeping with its visionary antecedents, moreover, that mysterium derives its impetus as much from the impulse to concretize and, indeed, technologize the ineffable as it does from the impulse to imbue it with ethereal qualities. In giving vent to this impulse, Spielberg bestows almost a comic quality on the experience of the vehicle's coming into full view. When that occurs, the vehicle ironically has the appearance of a gigantic old machine, the top of which looks like "an oil refinery, with huge tanks and pipes and working lights everywhere:' As it slides across the canyon, the phantom mass seems "somehow old and dirty." It even appears to be "junky;' rather like "an old city or an immense old ship that had been sailing the skies for thousands of years." In response to the attempt on the part of the assembled scientists and technicians to communicate with it through the use of musical notes, the vehicle makes a sound that at first resembles that of a pig grunting. IS On Spielberg's part, one might suggest, this "demystification" becomes in effect a self-reflexive act of ironic commentary that paradoxically serves to reinforce what is finally the ineffable and otherworldly quality of its bearing. Lurking beneath the ineffable is the "machine" that in its very mundane ness transforms the technological into a science of the divine. In that act of transformation, Spielberg brings into play his delight in the "scientific" dimensions of ineffability. It is here that the character of Claude Lacombe (played in the film version by Fran